GOP launches new offense on terrorism

'The world suddenly did not become safer on January 20, 2009,' House Republican Leader John Boehner said at a press conference Thursday.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - The GOP is sending a strong message to the Obama administration: Don't bring former Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States.

House Republicans introduced legislation Thursday aimed at stopping the release or transfer of terrorists at GITMO from being imported to the United States.

"The world suddenly did not become safer on January 20, 2009," House Republican Leader John Boehner said at a press conference Thursday. "We ought to make clear that none of these detainees should be brought to the United States until such time as the President has had a conversation with the American people, which is the essence of the bill that we are bringing forward."

The Keep Terrorists out of America Act opposes transfer of any detainee to the United States, but requires that governors and state legislatures pre-approve the import of terrorists from the prison camps to their respective states, if such a process should occur.

"Guantanamo was chosen for a specific reason. It is isolated," Texas Rep. Lamar Smith said Thursday. "That all fundamentally changes when you take them off of an island, away from Gitmo, and plunk them down in the middle of Michigan, in the middle of Kansas, in the middle of Virginia, or in the middle of New York."

No time frames or announcements have been made by the White House concerning what to do with some 240 detainees. The review that President Obama ordered at the beginning of his administration continues.